Affliction lock in our raid group struggling since 5.2

Armory: us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldaman/Eurayla/simple

Megaera attempts: worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bj81ql0g4psh2799/

Horridon/Council: worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-cjzc6gz2lwo8equv/

She was very competitive dps all of last tier using a weird (to me anyways) under hit cap build that maximizes haste/mastery secondary stats. I didn't really care too much as her numbers were awesome so why fix what isn't broken. However, this tier, as I look at combat logs, her numbers seem lower than what you would expect from her gear level (505 ilvl) or am I mistaken for Affliction?

I've been working with her (but I admittedly don't know Affliction very well) and she tried re-gemming/reforging into a hit cap build, but after several 10 minute target dummy sessions, her dps was consistently lower than with her current under hit cap build so she went back. I know affliction locks had some nerfs with 5.2, but I'm thinking there's something else going on. Her DoT uptime seems off on the Megaera attempts or is that normal?

She's a great player, raider and friend, I just want to help her get her dps back to where it was last tier. Any advice or feedback that you can think to pass along to her would be much appreciated.

She should really be hit capped or close to hit honestly. Not having hit cap was only viable back when the average ilvl was 470ish. She should also work on keeping her dots up more, based on those maegara logs her average uptime was 65-75% which is far from good on that fight. She should also NOT be using grimoire of sacrifice it is terrible in general now, especially at her ilvl. Last thing to tell her is not to use the dark soul glyph, their is literally no reason to use it.

Hit isn't a great stat for Affliction, though some warlocks like to cap it because missing all the time is annoying, but it would be expected to see a slight decrease in DPS moving to a hit capped build.

I notice she is still using Grimoire of Sacrifice, that was nerfed quite a bit, might be better off using Supremacy and a Pet. Glyph of Dark Soul is also questionable, I assume she isn't a fan of on use type CD like that, I don't blame her I never was either. I've macroed mine into Haunt, not as ideal as doing it the right way, but probably better than relying on the Glyph.

I'm not as hardcore these days as I used to be so I'm not familiar enough with the normal modes of these fights to give any good boss advice. I will say DOT uptime seems low, but they are both potentially multi-target fights where you ignore the other targets, I'm not sure how that skews in WOL. Malefic Grasp seems to have a very low uptime, and that ability doubles DOT damage on the target, so that's important. I also noticed some Fel Flames. With Kil'Jadens Cunning there is really no reason to ever use it, the only time normally is when you are moving and don't need to lifetap/refresh Agony/Corruption, its overall a DPS loss. Drainsoul, even to get back shards, before 20% is also a DPS loss and should be avoided.

There is a mod, AFFDOTS (works for other specs too) that helps tell you when you get procs to refresh dots, and even has basic DOt timers, that might help. UI setup is important for Affliction, you want to be able to easily see dots on all the targets so you can refresh them. I have Weak Auras setup so I get a heads up alert to show my shard count, if I can cast haunt, and when I hit Drain Soul phase.

I wish I could offer up some more specific advice, but I hope this helps.

-- I think she needs to hit cap, maybe she doesn't even notice she's missing. (there's not many warlocks that play bellow hit cap, if you actually look around I don't see any that are bellow 14% personally -- being slightly bellow is ok to say reach certain breakpoints but the absurd amount that she's at is a bit crazy in my opinion) | Yes on the pure single target environment of a training dummy it may be viable, for rng reasons or just simply because for pure single target in non raid awareness periods of time it's an increase but when it comes down to actually watching for mechanics and watching for misses, she may come up short.

-- I know Jin'rokh isn't a good fight to get a DPS read off of but, in the 4 minutes that she was on the fight...her dots we're under 98% uptime and her unstable was at 96%. (this is a no no, should get Affdots as MaximusRex recommended above)

-- While sac isn't bad, it got nerfed to 25% from the 50% it was in 5.1 (that's why she was doing competitive damage, she basically got nerfed by 25% on top of the 25% nerf to curruption in early 5.2). She should try out Supremacy.

-- Currently at 6246 haste with no imminent reason she didn't go for the 6637 breakpoint, should go for that.

I also noticed some Fel Flames. With Kil'Jadens Cunning there is really no reason to ever use it, the only time normally is when you are moving and don't need to lifetap/refresh Agony/Corruption, its overall a DPS loss.

Actually, it refreshes Corruption and Unstable Affliction to whatever stats you had at the time, I.E when you apply the dot's on the pull as you gain buffs from trinkets etc, rather than using a soulshard to recast all the dot's you can simply throw out a fel flame and buff the two dot's with your current stats, although if you have popped bloodlust it's arguably better to just use a soul shard to recast them.

Actually FF has a use with KJC in situations where you don't want to be snared (durumu running from eye beam, h.bladelord last tier, etc). It will muck up things a bit if you are rolling uber buffed dots but in a survival situation its fine. Aff since 5.2 pretty much dumps everything into haste, uses superiority, and hit caps. Get her weak auras, affdots, and something like drainsouler. Glyph siphon life, coex, and HS (or SS if you rez people alot). UA isn't a gain in pve nor are any of the other glyphs with some of them being a loss.

I don't see grim of sac taking over for aff until 4xT15 and near heroic ilvl. Even then multi dotting fights you'll get more out of superiority since sac only applies to the single target channeled damage so if you are multi dotting most of the time a pet will contribute more. Imp vs Obs is close enough that unless your observer can park on a target the imp will generally come out ahead in practice.

1. Change to GoSup & use Observer. On high movement fights, use Fel Imp
2. Take out glyph of Dark Soul. You NEVER want to use that, you should be using it on CD (or at least close to CD to align with trinket procs)
3. Anyone who doesnt get to hit cap doesnt know what they are doing. Sure there is some point where it becomes bad (aka when the only way to get hit cap would put you way over it). But other than that, get to hit cap, or at least very very close to it.
4. Gem & reforge to HASTE. With Mastery as secondary stat.

Other than that it just seems as if she doesnt know how to multidot. On Council, Aff locks should be top dmg. Personally I use ForteXorcist along with AffDots, but any dot trackers will do. Her dot uptime needs to be almost 100%.

Also I know you arent a very competitive guild, but its always good to use 2 specs. I too was very stubborn with staying Affliction, but this tier, there are some fights where Destro is just amazing for AOE. She may want to consider playing it for Horridon, Tortos and Primordius.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 12:28 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Werst

Actually FF has a use with KJC in situations where you don't want to be snared (durumu running from eye beam, h.bladelord last tier, etc). It will muck up things a bit if you are rolling uber buffed dots but in a survival situation its fine. Aff since 5.2 pretty much dumps everything into haste, uses superiority, and hit caps. Get her weak auras, affdots, and something like drainsouler. Glyph siphon life, coex, and HS (or SS if you rez people alot). UA isn't a gain in pve nor are any of the other glyphs with some of them being a loss.

I don't see grim of sac taking over for aff until 4xT15 and near heroic ilvl. Even then multi dotting fights you'll get more out of superiority since sac only applies to the single target channeled damage so if you are multi dotting most of the time a pet will contribute more. Imp vs Obs is close enough that unless your observer can park on a target the imp will generally come out ahead in practice.

FF never has a use with KJC. Durumu's eye beam? You have to move super slow. Not to mention with effective use of both your demonic portal & gateway, you should never use FF.

When you are using a pet, do you set it on assist or let it attack manually?

You want to minimize the movement of your pet, i.e. on horridon since he takes increased damage, you'll want to set him to Defensive and let him beat on the boss while you dot up the adds. Assist is good for any fight you want your pet attacking and switching to your target, defensive when you don't want it to accidentally switch to a target (dark animus) or you just like having control over what its pew pewing on.

H.Durumu or even normal if you are on the "outside" track KJC's snare can be dangerous. Same thing with h.bladelord's vortex last tier...a snare during that was lethal. Probably get you knocked off the platform on jikun if you aren't on nest duty. I wouldn't use it if I could help it but it has situational use. Also if you are using lei shen's trinket and don't have spare shards for a SB:SS you can get off a couple FF's to get auto crit dots going. Making a blanket statement of absolutes is a bad frame of mind to raid in. Its usually not needed but there are times when it is. For a lock relearning aff she is best to probably not use it as a general rule but you go a bit far....

Council demo (w' sac grim) is quite competitive. Roll auto crit dooms on things, keep dots up, use the crazy amt of demonic fury to keep you in meta most of the fight. You can beat the afflocks that way if you have the lei shen trinket. Otherwise aff is probably stronger. I parsed ahead of our two other afflocks this week, one of whom outgears me considerably.

Oh and using the observer's optical blast on CD is also a very minor dps increase. Look up its coef vs energy cost. Clearly don't use it if you are doing any kind of interupt duty but otherwise its a very minor increase. As for pet micro if you aren't using assist having it on passive and using some binds to tell it where to be is a gain once you've mastered aff's basics. Sounds like she needs to get those down first.

will be pretty much enforcing what other people have said previously :

- stuck in 5.1 considering reforging. need to be as close to 15% hit as possible without going over it. reforge into haste up to a minimum of 6637, afaik the next plateau is at 9218 ( might be wrong on this one) and the next at 9717, then the rest into mastery ( after going over 6637 haste should balance haste & mastery with haste superior by around 400-500 rating and it should be ok).
- Dark Soul glyph removed. you never want to be using that, EVER, like, EVER, not even back in 5.1, EVER. can switch to Soulstone ( seeing how it's a 10m raid and you'd only have 1 ress / fight she can ignore this one) or Healthstone for dire situations ( 100% more HP healed as a HoT for 10 secs).
- Switch GoSac with GoSup. haste afflicts the pet's dmg aswell & you want to switch back to GoSac when you're around or over 520 ilvl ( reasoning is at that point you're gonna have loads of mastery which does not increase the pet's dmg/abilities at all). if at that point you'd want to go for the next haste plateau ( which's very high, at around 13k+ rating if i'm not mistaken) should stick with GoSup, otherwise go for GoSac.
- DoT uptime. any decent aff lock should have over 90% uptime, if you're great at it, over 95%, amazing, well, around 98-99% i reckon. she doesn't have close to those, except maybe on the horridon tries. with more targets have her focus & keep dots on that target + main target, where padding uselessly is involved ( i.e. megaera) dot the head you're not killing with corr only ( for increased shard procs) while keeping dots on the main target, (i.e. council) track one of the not-empowered adds and keep dots on it ( should be able to multi-dot the other 2 aswell with SB:SS - will generate shards faster again). for this, can get AFFDOTS ( really useful dot tracker).

if after doing these she does not improve, time to consider recruiting someone else, although taking into account you said that she did acceptable dps in 5.1, following these steps + improving are guaranteed, dare i say.

1. Dark Soul Glyph is only viable if you are questing or you are such a noob, that you do not want to use Dark Soul ever. --> get rid of this DPS loss glyph
2. Hitcap is not 100% mandatory for Affli, but srsly 8% it may work on a target dummy or a patchwerk fight, but there is nothing compareable in ToT, get up to 12-15% at least. While dotting up multiple targets it goes like "press Tab, press DoT hotkey, press Tab, press DoT hotkey, press Tab, press DoT hotkey, etc." there is no time to react to a miss. And you want to have a maximum uptime of corruption on multible adds to gain lots of shards. Agony is also much more fun if it does not fall of due to a miss.
In 5.0 Affli reforged for max mastery and haste because you did not have enough stats for anything after getting hit capped, with 5.2 there is plenty.
3. DoT uptime, Agony should never fall off from the main target (Horridon for example) Corruption and UA should have a high uptime (60-75% is not good at all)
4. I recommend that you tell your friend to read some guides to get up to date again.
5. high damage in 5.0 and 5.1 ... well with that insane GoSac damagebonus it is hard to fail in dps.
6. GoSac ... some theorycrafters tell GoSac beats GoSup at ilvl >522, this may be true in perfect playstyle so i suggest to generally stay GoSup for most fights (stick observer on something or Imp for switching targets + dispell)
7. GoSac only on bugged fights, where Pets die to no reason or the KI bugs a lot. (maybe Ki'Jun, Durumu) But the Imp fixes most of the problems.
8. Why don´t try Destro? Your Destro lock deals like 50% more damage.

Tips:
She needs to get hit capped.
Spec supremacy.
Remove the TERRIBLE dark soul glyph.. I mean god awful!
Go all-out on haste glyphs/reforge/enchants. That is what most affliction locks do these days.
She could probably benefit from a good guide all-in-all. Although why she didn't seek this information by herself is batheling to me.

Council demo (w' sac grim) is quite competitive. Roll auto crit dooms on things, keep dots up, use the crazy amt of demonic fury to keep you in meta most of the fight. You can beat the afflocks that way if you have the lei shen trinket. Otherwise aff is probably stronger. I parsed ahead of our two other afflocks this week, one of whom outgears me considerably.

Understatement of the year right here. :P

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 01:06 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Gravityx

FF never has a use with KJC. Durumu's eye beam? You have to move super slow. Not to mention with effective use of both your demonic portal & gateway, you should never use FF.

100% crit proc/super-buff procs up, and UA/Corr have <6 seconds off of their max pandemic duration? You should use fel flame.

You can't definitively say something will never have a use. People said Everlasting Affliction glyph will never have a use, but with Lei-shen's proc + Doom it's extremely beneficial.

Your guildmate needs:
Haste: 9778 (later 13737)
Hit: 15%
Mastery: Whatever is left after reaching the desired haste breakpoint, mastery lost alot of stat value due to pets not benefitting from it and us no longer saccing them.
Crit: Whatever you cannot possibly move into haste mastery or hit. 3529 is fine.

Fel Imp is the simplest pet choice and the dps difference between it and the Observer isn't large.